Illegal Financing Buys Influence

WILLIAM SAFIRE

SAN FRANCISCO - — Whose money is buying those anti-Dole TV spots saturating the airwaves, and what are the secret sponsors getting for their investment?

Thanks to the reporting enterprise of The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal (whatever became of The Washington Post and "60 Minutes''?), we have learned that a good chunk of Clinton campaign money comes from "the Asian connection" - millions from Indonesia's Riady family, from its $6 billion Lippo banking interests in California and Hong Kong, and the Asian money-raising prowess of its hired hand, John Huang.

Huang, who involved President Clinton personally in prying an illegal $250,000 out of a South Korean company, also helped steer $425,000 to buy those TV spots through a gardener and his wife. That resident alien couple, related to a Lippo bank partner, went home to Indonesia and then sent over $295,000 of their contribution. That's an election crime no matter what Al Gore says.

But set that aside for future prosecutors. Focus on simple sleaze: It's wrong for Bill Clinton to solicit money from a powerful family in cahoots with a foreign dictator to affect the American election.

Focus, too, on obstructing justice in the Whitewater scandal: between the time the Clinton confidant Webster Hubbell was forced to leave the Justice Department and went to jail, it was a Lippo retainer who gave him the comfort to remain hushed.

What has the Riady family been getting for its campaign money investment? Plenty; Clinton's Asian connection helped turn around U.S. policy on human rights.

Fact: In 1992 President George Bush launched a formal review of whether Indonesia, with its military thugs terrorizing labor organizers, was failing to live up to "international labor standards" and should be denied duty-free access to U.S. markets.

Fact: Clinton's former campaign manager, Mickey Kantor, when he became U.S. trade representative, resolutely kept that review from being terminated throughout 1993. But at the same time, James Riady, Webster Hubbell and a Little Rock lawyer, Mark Grobmyer, worked over President Clinton to forget about the support Candidate Clinton had promised the people of East Timor, targets of bloody repression.

That $40-million-a-year gift to Indonesian exporters and bankers reduced our human rights leverage in East Timor. It presaged Clinton's flip-flop three months later that removed all trade pressure on China to encourage democracy.

Grant that other policy arguments by hungry U.S. executives and eager advocates of engagement carried weight. But heavy money plus top-level persuasion provides basis to believe that U.S. foreign policy was improperly influenced by the back-channel dealings of Clinton's "Asian connection."

Now to Huang, fondly called "aggressive" by Clinton. For two years, this richly severanced Lippo operative held the sensitive post of deputy assistant secretary of commerce for international economic affairs. That job requires a Top Secret clearance, sometimes one for Special Compartmented Intelligence.

Thus, Huang was privy to U.S. trade bargaining positions, internal reviews of policies toward Indonesian and Chinese interests, even electronic and satellite intelligence from the National Security Agency.

Surely the FBI conducted a full field investigation of Huang before he was granted his top-security clearance. Oversighters should ask: Did its summary reveal to Craig Livingstone the background to Lippo's agreement with the FDIC to cease and desist from violating laws about money laundering?

Clinton's Asian connection carries no "gate" in its slug. The scandal's coverage cannot be dismissed as being driven by a partisan Congress or a procrastinating prosecutor or an opposition candidate.

For a change, the story is being ferreted out by reporters and editorialists. Some are uncomfortable about the sleaze they are uncovering, but want to be on firm ground when asked later: "Where were you when American foreign economic policy was put up for sale?''

-- Readers may write to William Safire at The New York Times, 229 W. 43rd St., New York, N.Y. 10036.